Thursday, March 27, Concord, NH

What participants say about Let's Talk

March 28, 2008: Concord, NH

Let's Talk Part II: How to Communicate Effectively in the Midst of Tension. This six-hour training builds on Let’s Talk in helping participants look at how they can become more powerful in managing difficult conversations in their lives. It invites participants to explore the advantages and potential drawbacks of their own communication style while giving concrete tools to work more effectively in conflict. While the starting point and the biggest help in managing any difficult conversation is managing our own mindset (Part One), this training helps participants go further putting new skills and mindsets into practice. Participants will learn how to balance advocacy with inquiry, and how to plan, initiate, and resolve difficult conversations. This is a great follow up training for those individuals who took Let’s Talk and want more

Objectives: Through discussion, reflective exercises and coaching, you will:

1. Learn about your own communication style and when you might have to adjust it to communicate more effectively
2. How to balance advocacy with inquiry
3. How to plan, initiate and resolve difficult conversations
4. Learn to change ingrained patterns of communication
5. Learn how to frame complex problems into resolvable issues
6. Learn to distinguish between conflicts that can be resolved, and those that must be managed

Call (603) 271-1434 to register.

Friday, January 11, 2008
Waterbury, VT

How Leaders Can Manage Conflict and Influence Systems:

Recent studies have shown that managers spend up to one-third of their time managing conflicts. Given this astounding percentage, nothing could be more important for managers than to gain the tools and skills to engage in conflict more effectively. Because it is easier to blame an individual than to understand a system, most conflict resolution training focuses on the individual as the source of conflict. This training will help supervisors with some tools to deal with difficult individuals, but we will also explore larger systemic causes of conflict such as organizational structure, organizational change, and organizational culture. While it is much more difficult to "resolve" these systemic causes of conflict, this training will present tools to help leaders "manage" these tensions.

Through discussion, reflective exercises and coaching, you will:

1. Gain an understanding of often unspoken beliefs and assumptions, how these assumptions differ for those at different levels of the organization, and how they dramatically shape difficult conversations and make it difficult to move out of cycles of blame and defensiveness.
2. Understand the role that systems play in creating conflict
3. Understand and be able to create win/win outcomes.
4. Give clear performance evaluations to difficult employees
5. Learn to manage tensions that arise from different organizational structures.
6. Learn tools to manage tensions that arise out of organizational change efforts
7. Learn the basics of how to identify, shape and shift an organizations culture, which often contributes to unresolved or unmanged conflict.

This class is primarily designed for VT state employees. If you wish to be put on a waiting list for this class subject to availability call Cheshire Mediation at 800-757-3887.

Child Impact Training--Ongoing